The problem.. as I see it.. with atheist’s beliefs.. is that they also serve to promote the deluded mainstream idea.. that the stories in the Bible should be taken to have a literal meaning... thereby getting in bed with the more literally minded Christians.. who fail to see the metaphor behind the miracle stories. They are deaf dumb and blind... or so it seems.

For sure.. the Bible has nothing to do with the supernatural.. or miracles.. this error arises only with an inexperienced literal reader.. while the more poetic among us will see the metaphor.. and behind the metaphor.. a truth. All the stores have hidden meanings.. and an attentive reader will set out to discover them....

The Bible is steeped in symbolism.. and pulls out all the stops in its use of language.. it was not written for the casual reader.. it is an occult book.. meaning it has a hidden agenda.. which is to strip away the power from the state (the Devil) and hand it back where in belongs.. to the individual. This is expressed.. poetically.. as God being within us. Again.. there is nothing supernatral about this.. just metaphor.

When confronted by metaphor or symbolism.. the reader only needs to ask.... What does this really mean..?

In spite of popular opinion.. the good book has nothing good to say about organized religion.. This is one of the many things it shares with Buddhism.. and Atheism.. an opposition towards supernatural beliefs.. ceremony and ritual.. etc. A great deal of the book is concerned with trashing worthless religious practices.. along with corrupt governments and the twisted system of (in)justice. It supports many of the atheist arguments.. to such an extent that the atheist could honestly declare..

God is on our side.

Most of the arguments against religion.. raised by atheists.. are already contained in the scriptures.. for example.. the making the laws of Moses obsolete.. because they contain errors.. is something I hear many atheists comment on. However.. this issue.. that was raised by David in the Psalms.. has already been dealt with by Jesus

I would like to publish a few examples here.. to clarify that what atheists believe in.. is found at the very core of authentic religious teachings. Mainly because I love a paradox.

Having once been an atheist myself.. I found the beliefs of some of the atheists at www.atheists.org very interesting. Ironically.. they correspond to many of the most principle religious teachings.. to the letter.

This being the case.. maybe they should change their name to..

The American Federation of Christian Atheists..

The truth is often paradoxical.. or so it seems.

Their blunt refusal to engage with me over these issues.. prompted me to raise them here...

The American Atheists' Mission Statement

"Your petitioners are Atheists, and they define their lifestyle as follows.

"An Atheist loves himself and his fellow man instead of a god. An Atheist accepts that heaven is something for which we should work now -- here on earth -- for all men together to enjoy. An Atheist accepts that he can get no help through prayer, but that he must find in himself the inner conviction and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue it and to enjoy it. An Atheist accepts that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment."

I did e-mail them a couple of times.. and invited them to discuss but they declined.

So I decided to publish my argument anyway.

Below . . point by point . . is a copy of one issue I raised with them . .

1. An Atheist loves himself and his fellow man instead of a god.

Correspondingly . . the Bible says:

“You must not take vengeance nor have a grudge against the sons of your people; and you must love your fellow as yourself.”

Leviticus 19:18

“All things, therefore, that you want men to do to you, you also must likewise do to them; this, in fact, is what the Law and the Prophets mean.”

Matthew 7:12

2. An Atheist accepts that heaven is something for which we should work now -- here on earth -- for all men together to enjoy.

And.. Jesus taught..*

“The Kingdom of heaven is spread upon the surface of the Earth.. yet men do not see it.”

Jesus- Gospel of Thomas

3. An Atheist accepts that he can get no help through prayer, . . .

The prophets also saw the people's prayers as worthless too...

“And when you spread out your palms, I hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I am not listening; with bloodshed your very hands have become filled.”

Isaiah 1:15

"And as for you, do not pray in behalf of this people, and do not lift up in their behalf an entreating cry or a prayer, for I shall not be listening in the time of their calling out to me in regard to their calamity.

Jeremiah 11:14

”...but that an atheist must find in himself the inner conviction and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue it and to enjoy it.”

However.. the Bible teaches the need for us to have inner conviction also...

“Why do you not judge also for yourselves what is righteous?”

Luke 12:57

“For whenever people of the nations that do not have law do by nature the things of the law, these people, although not having law, are a law to themselves. They are the very ones who demonstrate the matter of the law to be written in their hearts, while their conscience is bearing witness with them and, between their own thoughts, they are being accused or even excused.”

Romans 2:12

4. An Atheist accepts that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment."

If so..then.. it seems that the atheist is indeed.. deeply religious.. since the purpose of religion is to give us the knowledge to link back to who we REALLY are.*

"Since it has been said that you are my twin and true companion.. examine yourself! - Examine yourself.. so that you may understand who you are... And you will be called the one who knows themself! For whoever has not know themself.. has known nothing. But whoever has known themself.. has simutaniously achieved knowledge of the depth of the ALL!

Jesus - Thomas the Contender

The question is..

Does God speak through Richard Dawkins..?

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"New moon and sabbath, the calling of a convention_ I cannot put up with the use of UNCANNY POWER along with the SOLEMN ASSEMBLY. Your new moons and your festive seasons my soul has hated. To me they have become a burden; I have become tired of bearing them. "

"For into a poisonous plant you people have turned justice, and the fruitage of righteousness into wormwood, you who are rejoicing in a thing that is not."

Isaiah 1:10 + Amos 6:14

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So.. was the Bible written by atheists..?

If people could only read the Bible more attentively.. they would realize that it is against the practices of organized religion.. and belief in the supernatural..

The myths are simply symbolic stories.. representing what goes on in human hearts and minds..... an early emergence of the science of psychology.

The word - God - functions as a symbol... not a noun.

"It is only through the psyche that we can distinguish whether God and the unconscious are two different entities. Both are border line concepts for the transcendental contents. But empirically it can be established, with sufficient degree of probability, that there is in the unconscious an archetype of wholeness which manifests itself spontaneously in dreams, etc, and a tendency, independent of the conscious will, to relate to other archetypes to this center. Consequently, it does not seem improbable that the archetype produces a symbolism which has always been characterized and expressed the Deity.... The God-image does not coincide with the unconscious as such, but with a special content of it, namely the archetype of the Self. It is this archetype from which we can no longer distinguish the God-image empirically."

Carl Jung - Psychology and Religion: West and East

Note: God-image. . it is from the psychological point of view, a symbol of the Self, of psychic wholeness.

Theologian William Occam's Razor

Often highjacked and wrongly used as an Atheist argument

In the philosophy of religion Occam's Razor is sometimes used to defeat arguments for the existence of God and support the rationality of atheism. These applications of Occam's Razor are not considered definitive, since they often hinge on highly debatable notions of "simplicity". For example, postulating special creation involves some obvious big assumptions--but to claim that evolution is a "simpler" hypothesis requires that one quantify the exact nature and magnitude of the assumptions on which it rests.

What is known as Occam's razor was a common principle in medieval philosophy and was not originated by William, but because of his frequent usage of the principle, his name has become indelibly attached to it. It is unlikely that William would appreciate what some of us have done in his name. For example, atheists often apply Occam's razor in arguing against the existence of God on the grounds that God is an unnecessary hypothesis. We can explain everything without assuming the extra metaphysical baggage of a Divine Being.

William's use of the principle of unnecessary plurality occurs in debates over the medieval equivalent of psi. For example, in Book II of his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Abelard, he is deep in thought about the question of "Whether a Higher Angel Knows Through Fewer Species than a Lower." Using the principle that "plurality should not be posited without necessity" he argues that the answer to the question is in the affirmative. He also cites Aristotle's notion that "the more perfect a nature is the fewer means it requires for its operation." This principle has been used by atheists to reject the God-the-Creator hypothesis in favor of natural evolution: if a Perfect God had created the Universe, both the Universe and its components would be much simpler. William would not have approved.

He did argue, however, that natural theology is impossible. Natural theology uses reason alone to understand God, as contrasted with revealed theology which is founded upon scriptural revelations. According to Occam, the idea of God is not established by evident experience or evident reasoning. All we know about God we know from revelation. The foundation of all theology, therefore, is faith. It should be noted that while others might apply the razor to eliminate the entire spiritual world, Ockham did not apply the principle of parsimony to the articles of faith. Had he done so, he might have become a Socinian like John Toland (Christianity not Mysterious, 1696) and pared down the Trinity to a Unity and the dual nature of Christ to a single nature.

"As readers will see when reading this interview, Edison's Atheism was not quite what we call Atheism today, although the term Atheist describes him better than any other single word except perhaps pantheist. Edison's absolute materialism seems impossible to reconcile with pantheism given its usual, historical meaning of "the worship of all gods of various cults," but the redefinition of the term made by the English Deist J. Toland - making pantheism "the doctrine that 'God' is not a personality, but rather the sum of all laws, forces, and manifestations of the self-existing universe" - arguably would serve as well. Even so, Atheists certainly can argue that such redefinition is simply a misuse of words. Why call the universe 'God' when the word 'universe' is perfectly unambiguous and conveys a clear meaning? Why use the word 'God' for something so utterly un-godlike as the material world?"

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However.. the idea that God is the universe is incorrect.. since we use the word universe only in the sense of the physical presence.. and the arrangement of mass energy. However.. Toland further defines God as being.. "the sum of all laws, forces, and manifestations of the self-existing universe" . . which to me.. would suggest that he was attempting to imply.. the ALL.

What's more.. it is highly probable that the universe is in itself not unique.. and is more than likely just one of many more.. just as there is more than one galaxy. The word "universe" does not convey a sense of wholeness.. or the ALL.. ar all. Our universe is probably just a small insignificant expanding bubble among an inifinite number of others.

Yet.. the atheist still fails to take the authentic definition of God.. as an idea of the underlying Wholeness of ALL Things.. into consideration.. preferring the supernatural definition.. a concept which.. for many.. is too foolish to disbelieve in.. it is nothing but an error.. arising out of poor reading comprehension. Like saying.. “I don’t believe in Snow White… because the story is unscientific.. and as for the god Mercury.. i am having some doubts about his existence too.. in these times.. atheism should be intellectually obsolete.

Nor do they deal with the idea of the "God inside".. which is the only authentic definition that can be verified.. in the form of Loving kindness.. Righteousness.. Justice.. Wisdom.. Peace.. Truth and Freedom… this is the God of the Bible.. and is also central to Buddhism.

The idea of God as a supernatural personality only occurs in scripture in the form of allegory and myth. The evidence is there.. None of the prophets ever defined God to be that way. However.. they did pander to the expectations of the common folk.. who believed in supernatural entities.. by using the word.. "God" as a multi-dimensional symbol.. that could mean all things to all men.

Yes.. the men who wrote the Bible books… resorted to a certain amount of honest trickery.

“.....as deceivers and yet truthful, as being unknown and yet being recognized, as dying and yet, look! we live, as sorrowing but ever rejoicing, as poor but making many rich, as having nothing yet possessing all things.”

“Nevertheless, you say, I was crafty and caught you "by trickery." We walked in the same spirit, did we not? Yet if by reason of my lie the truth of God has been made more prominent to his glory, why am I also being judged as a sinner?”